RUSSIAN SANCTIONS - WHAT, NO VODKA AND CAVIAR FOR OBAMA?

By Ruma Dubey

Our Indian media is too caught up on covering “who said what, who did what” on the political arena; it is as though there is nothing else happening in the world. The rest of world be damned because the largest democracy in the world is going to vote; so what if we do not have a single leader or a party with ideals of a true leader, a sparkling clean reputation where his/her biggest virtues are love for the country first, honesty and integrity.  One looks at the news on TV, one would think that nothing else is happening in the world – everything is oh so peaceful!  The mystery of the Malaysian Airlines is covered like a footnote after a long political story and the happenings in Russia, Ukraine and Crimea do not even figure out on most channels. So while on one hand, we say that the we live in a flat world today, we are an important number in the global equation; how come we are so ‘blinkered on’, looking only at the bickering politicians, something like a soap opera gone bad?

Well, on the world front, economically, the big thing now are the sanctions being imposed by the rest of the world – US and maybe Europe ( it depends on Russia for its gas needs) on Russia for annexing Crimea.  America put out names of the Russians and Ukrainians who would have their American assets frozen and there is a ban on visa too. Russians can no longer use Master and Visa cards. But all these ‘sanctions’ seem more token, more personal; it is almost as though America is forced to take some action and hence it is doing so. Well, the Europeans are caught between a rock and a hard place – can it afford to say that it will not buy gas from Russia? Europeans will freeze to death while Russia will happily sell its gas to other willing buyers.

So the big question here is – do sanctions work? Well, in this case it does not seem like sanctions will work. Only when the rest of the world come together and collectively impose and follow the sanctions’ basically isolate the ‘erring’ country, only then will sanctions will work. Like North Korea, which in all aspects is truly isolated from the entire world. But that, in today’s world, isolating Russia simply cannot happen. The Russian economy is not like that of Iran with China and India already taking sides and entire of Europe and London to a very large extent depends to a large extent on Russian gas and the big money of the Russian oligarchs respectively.

Talking about Oligarchs, they are too deeply entrenched into the UK economy with more than enough evidence to show that scale of capital flowing from oligarchs into the British economy is simply too massive to be turned off. It’s a well known and well documented fact that this investment of corrupt assets in its economy has made the UK complicit with patterns of systemic corruption in Russia. They have been time and again been questioned about laundering Russian money but UK has chosen to turn a deaf ear. Thus for UK, the dependence on Russian money is too big and it would come as no surprise to see that it may limit its support for sanctions on the Russian oligarchs.

And by the way, the oligarchs, against whom the sanctions have been imposed, do not care much. They are buddy pals of Putin and there are whispers in the corridors of power that these, 20 odd people, are actually holding assets for Putin – something like what our politicians do. So it is unlikely that Putin will ever allow these ‘sanctioned’ officials to be unhappy; he may ask Russians banks to provide money or give them more lucrative contracts, ensuring they are never left wanting for money. In the bargain what will happen is that though sanctions have been imposed on the big and powerful people, it would once again be the ordinary Russians who will suffer.

Another logical question then comes to mind – why are these sanctions being imposed, even if just token? Well, because the ‘world’ fears this secession of Crimea will lead to separatist movements around the world, as right from Scotland, Catalonia to our very own Kashmir, everyone wants to become independent. But there is a big difference here – Crimea did not become an independent country, it has now become a part of Russia. So in that sense, Crimea cannot ‘inspire’ other separatists as they do not want to become a part of another big country. Yes, in today’s time, annexing another country is not right and raising a voice against that is right but then, majority of the Crimeans want to become a part of Russia.

These sanctions are not going to cause even a crease on Putin’s forehead; it will hurt the common man in the street, like how every sanction does. Thus in many ways, people pay a price for the atrocities of those in power, like always.

PS: There are many jokes abound on Russian sanctions – does this mean no more Vodka for Obama? And then there are those Russian senators and officials, who are pretty miffed that their names were ‘not included’ in the sanctions list as those whose names did figure out, are strutting all around town, boasting that the West has actually, formally recognised them as oligarchs!